When Robots Attack

Sharks, on sea, land, and air, kill more Americans than robots do. And to be sure, there are a lot of summer blockbusters about sharks and other water monsters. Still, robot killings have long taken center stage, and now John Markoff and Claire Cain Miller feature OSHA’s stats that robots have killed about one person a year since the mid-1980s. Again, this is fewer than are killed by sharks. Yet, with all the press about personal robots emerging (e.g. TheEconomist,Science), they are becoming more of an option for the über-rich to employ.

Robots who are supposed to work in cages no longer need to be restricted to auto factories. I guess we can look forward to Robocop variations next summer; perhaps it will say, “Coming soon to you: Robo maid kills non-robo master or mistress.” It could be set on Wall Street or in the Bloomberg building on the Upper East Side.